Sunday, June 17, 2012

Curt Schilling will take a leave of absence from his role as an analyst for ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” as he deals with the legal issues of his company, 38 Studios, according to a tweet posted by ESPN PR representative Mike Soltys.

The tweet, posted Saturday afternoon, read: “We mutually agreed w/CurtSchilling to take a leave as he works thru his business issues. We expect he will return on air later this season.”

The former Red Sox pitcher has been fighting legal battles related to his troubled video gaming company started in 2010—the same year he began work at ESPN.

Schilling was lured to Rhode Island with a $75 million state loan guarantee two years ago, filed for bankruptcy protection June 7, and federal authorities have begun an investigation into the firm.

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And somewhere, on the website with the slogan "videogaming for the thinking fan", some fool is proudly posting how baseball can't possibly have anything worth analyzing or writing about, while the rest justifiably mock him. "It's just men trying to hit a ball with a stick and failing a lot, after all. You'd have to have no life at all to spend as much as 2 hours a day watching that, let alone talking about it with strangers on the Internet. And pretend - I mean, fantasy baseball? Wow!"

Hey. All of us are right!

Anyway, the article in post 50 should have been my last word on this one, only I can't find the article. So, enjoy not enjoying things, everyone!

How much position stands on the fact that these are called "games"? Because that's not a very strong foundation. Most modern games have narrative and characters and plot. To be sure, they often have bad narrative or bad characters or bad plot, but so do many movies, television shows, and books. Do you really think that all or most video games are like Monopoly, or even like Space Invaders or Pac Man?

Even so, I'm going to go out on a limb & say that whatever makes them games is ... what makes them games. If they're not games, then why are we calling them games, instead of movies, TV shows & books?

Not that many once marriage, kids and work become prominent parts of your life. Seems like a lot of folks here are into video games, comic books, music and even professional wrestling (It's fixed, you know!). I'm not sure how you do all that and still have enough time for baseball, but to each his own

If I were still married (the 2nd marriage ended in 12/90) &/or had kids, I'm sure I'd spend comparatively precious little time & money on comics, music, movies, etc. My priorities, however, are instead in proper order. And now that I'm no longer in newspapers (that career ended in 11/02), I never take my work home.

When it comes to gaming, definitely. As I've said more than once, I just lack that gene. Never even played pinball as a kid, much less -- after they came along -- arcade-type games. Can't remember when home stuff like Pong was big -- early '80s? -- but I guess people played them on their TV screens or something; we were in grad school & didn't have a TV, so that never penetrated my existence. When I acquired stepdaughters in '85, I know they'd had Atari stuff, but by then (ages ... lessee ... 12 & 15) they'd outgrown it.

The basic get-off-my-lawn problem I have with the new gaming systems these days (and someone bought me an X-Box recently as a gift but after experimenting initially with it I never use it) is that the sports-types games that I like are now very complex, with 12 different buttons or combinations, taking into account things like wind currents and the like for football, etc. It's too tireseome to learn. And I liked the old views, where it was basically left to right on a screen (such as for football) because the processors were primitive and the graphics cards and memory couldn't handle anything else. Now with all these different view angles and different ways of kicking the ball and playing -- it's too much for my tastes.

I would call this a feature more than a bug. Simulating more aspects of whatever you're playing leads to more interesting scenarios and more potential for creative problem-solving. Even a game like Grand Theft Auto, with straight-up run-n'-gun violence, there are a multitude of interesting ways to achieve most goals. Games of football and baseball have far more ways to approach things than they did 20 years ago - for example, in MLB The Show, the way you approach batters as a fastball pitcher and a junkballer are extremely different.

One of the nice side effects is that writing for games has generally gotten a lot better as well, thanks to the aging of the audience. I loved Final Fantasy, but when it comes down to it, outside of a few interesting concepts surrounding the final boss and a 2000-year time loop, it was pretty straightforward "Collect the Maguffin, Kill the Bad Guy." Fast-forward to, say, the second half of Final Fantasy XII and the game has some very interesting conflicts about responsibility, predestination, and the nature of the individual characters' existence and "bad guys" that arguably had noble motivations.

Personally, I've had a greater personal connection with particular games in the last 20 years than with any films I've seen over the same period of time (well, except the Seventh Seal). A well-executed game can get one incredibly emotionally invested in the storyline. The ending of Final Fantasy X and events towards the end of Suikoden V were both quite moving.

@86 I meant board games. WAIT A MINUTE! I already corrected my post to say 20hour/week of MONOPOLY. Also we have to consider that hobbies (such as video games, sports, board games) that one does for 20 hours / week are not all created equal. The sheer number of people for whom video games is a primary hobby is important too.

There are folks who have boardgames as a primary hobby (for me it's secondary or tertiary) but that's clearly a niche group.

I've run into (via the internet, of course; not surprisingly, I don't go to cons or anything of the sort) at least one comics pro who's into pro wrestling, so I like to think that nothing surprises me. (Unfortunately, I'm wrong in that belief, of course.)

Even so, I'm going to go out on a limb & say that whatever makes them games is ... what makes them games. If they're not games, then why are we calling them games, instead of movies, TV shows & books?

When it comes to gaming, definitely. As I've said more than once, I just lack that gene. Never even played pinball as a kid, much less -- after they came along -- arcade-type games. Can't remember when home stuff like Pong was big -- early '80s? -- but I guess people played them on their TV screens or something; we were in grad school & didn't have a TV, so that never penetrated my existence. When I acquired stepdaughters in '85, I know they'd had Atari stuff, but by then (ages ... lessee ... 12 & 15) they'd outgrown it.

So your position is that you know almost nothing about video games, but are sure that they're silly because they're called video games?

So your position is that you know almost nothing about video games, but are sure that they're silly because they're called video games?

I presume they're no more inherently silly than (since it's been mentioned) Monopoly (which I certainly played my fair share of when I was about 10 ... but, y'know, I was 10). If people out there are averaging 20+ hour a week, 52 weeks a year, playing or obsessing about Monopoly, & going to Monopoly cons, & downloading or buying CDs with songs about Monopoly, & posting over & over in Monopoly-focused forums & babbling endlessly about Monopoly on non-Monopoly-focused forums, & letting everyone on Facebook or other social media sites know every nuance of their experience playing Monopoly, & buying Monopoly magazines, & pretending that Monopoly is a sport (as I have seen claimed elsewhere for RPG-type stuff) ... they just might need help. Lots of it.

Of course, Monopoly isn't all board games. So for "Monopoly," sub "board games." Same thing, I think, applies.

I would love to fast-forward to the second half of Final Fantasy XII if it meant I didn't have to play the first half.

Final Fantasy XII's second-half definitely caught me by surprise as well (which is why I specified second-half). It was quite paint-by-numbers until Raithwall's Tomb. I'm still not sure that Venat isn't actually the main protagonist.

Also we have to consider that hobbies (such as video games, sports, board games) that one does for 20 hours / week are not all created equal. The sheer number of people for whom video games is a primary hobby is important too.

That's what I was trying to figure out with the video games/cultural literacy stuff -- why? Why aren't video games just a hobby, like sports or board games? And why aren't all of them "created equal"?

Video games differ from film or TV shows in obvious ways -- they're interactive, generally involve some type of score or contest, and involve animated characters.

I can't tell how serious or tongue-in-cheek gef is with his judgmentalism. I mean, I'm pretty dry with my posts, and I'd be horrified at what someone thought of me if they took me at face value.

Context-free, though, gef, you read like a closed-minded judgmental (nanny-censored-word-of-your-choice). I don't want this to be personal, but I did want that data point to be out there for your consumption.

Video games differ from film or TV shows in obvious ways -- they're interactive, generally involve some type of score or contest, and involve animated characters.

Interactivity is a big difference. But most games do not involve a score or contest (with obvious exceptions like sports games). At the very least, most games include some sort of story-mode where a main character proceeds through a narrative (again, it is often a bad narrative). That narrative will have conflict, but so does almost every movie or television show. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that animated characters are a significant difference. Some movies are fully animated (obviously) and many movies contain significant characters, settings, sequences, etc. that are completely computer generated.

It's the combination of the three. The intent of the video game producer is to entertain the participating consumer, which differs from the intent of movie and TV show creators. Up and The Simpsons bear a merely superficial resemblance to video games.

So your position is that you know almost nothing about video games, but are sure that they're silly, and are more or less the same as board games, because they're called video games?

As a ####### raison d'etre? Yes. I'm sure that they're silly. Hard as it may be for you to grasp, I venture to say that certain things that some people are ####### obsessed with are silly. I venture to assert that, oh, people who dress up as their favorite anime characters at conventions are silly.*

Now, maybe you yourself like to dress up as an anime character. Go for it -- knock yourself out. But be aware that somebody out there, & probably not just me, might, just might, think you're silly, no matter how many ####### Salon(or whatever) articles you might be able to dredge up that appear to reaffirm your little activity as intellectually & artistically valid, above & beyond just something you like to do.

Just as an example, y'know.

*So are people, to hit closer to home for me & mine, who spend hundreds of bucks for a comic book came out 7 years ago ... though admittedly I'm perfectly happy to sell my copy of Walking Dead #19 to any such psycho.

Now, maybe you yourself like to dress up as an anime character. Go for it -- knock yourself out. But be aware that somebody out there, & probably not just me, might, just might, think you're silly, no matter how many ####### Salon(or whatever) articles you might be able to dredge up that appear to reaffirm your little activity as intellectually & artistically valid, above & beyond just something you like to do.

I could, of course, be dead wrong. Admittedly, I don't watch anime or dress up in costumes. Maybe the people who do that are the DaVincis of today, & I'm just a mean ol' meanie who can't see it because of my mean meanieness.

Now, maybe you yourself like to dress up as an anime character. Go for it -- knock yourself out. But be aware that somebody out there, & probably not just me, might, just might, think you're silly, no matter how many ####### Salon(or whatever) articles you might be able to dredge up that appear to reaffirm your little activity as intellectually & artistically valid.

Anime character? Don't really know any, I'll have to defer to the comics guy on that. I think you want to accuse me of dressing up as a Scrabble tile, or maybe a joystick because, really, what's the difference. I don't really care that much whether people think my hobby is "valid", although it seems to really offend you that someone might think that it is. Which is weird, because, based on your post 110, you seem to have spent almost no time thinking about video games over the past 30 years or so. Why does it bother you so much that other people think video games are very interesting?

Why does it bother you so much that other people think video games are very interesting?

Doesn't bother me at all.

It doesbother me when they assert that those who don't find them interesting are somehow completely out of touch with the modern psyche ... as if their own particular psyches are somehow the only valid such entities on the planet.

Maybe you don't think that. Others do, though. I think that's as specious as my saying that anyone who doesn't read comics/sf/true crime/baseball biographies/whatever or watch horror/mysteries/sitcoms/pro wrestling/whatever is somehow completely out of touch with the modern psyche.

It does bother me when they assert that those who don't find them interesting are somehow completely out of touch with the modern psyche.

FWIW, I don't think anyone said that. I think the assertion was that people who don't know anything about video games (not "who don't find them interesting") are ignorant of a significant element of popular culture (not "out of touch with the modern psyche"). I don't care whether you like them or not, but if someone has literally no idea what an XBox 360 is, they're pretty far out of the mainstream. However, if you actively dislike them, you probably know enough about them to not count as being completely ignorant of them.

To draw a parallel, someone who doesn't watch television because they don't like it is a little weird when compared to the mainstream. But someone who has no idea what a television is? That person's so far disconnected from the culture as to not be a part of it.

It does bother me when they assert that those who don't find them interesting are somehow completely out of touch with the modern psyche ... as if their own particular psyches are somehow the only valid such entities on the planet.

Ok, sorry if I conveyed that because I'm with Monty. It would be weird if someone was completely unaware of video games, but I don't really care whether a paricular someone likes or does not like them.

I thought the claim was more that knowing at least something of the content and substance of particular video games was a prerequisite to 21st century cultural literacy -- in the same way that one isn't culturally literate if he doesn't have some familiarity with The Great Gatsby or The Godfather.

The claim went beyond possessing a general awareness that video games are popular form of mass entertainment in the early 21st c., which any student of our era could discover in the fifteen seconds it took to find that Monopoly was the parlor craze of 1936.

I venture to say that certain things that some people are ####### obsessed with are silly.

You have this quite wrong. ALL things that people are obsessed with are silly. Being obsessed with video games, baseball, playing the piano, reading, guns, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, fancy food, your work, movies, art, nature, politics. Whatever. It's all silly.

Unless you are actually obsessed with finding enough food or providing a roof over your head or keeping your family safe from harm - maybe you should just back off on who's obsessions are silly.

And for SBB - is your point that video games != books and film, or that only such luminaries as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Francis Ford Coppola need be considered for cultural chops? (and by extension there are no such works of art/cultural icons in the video game genre). You remind me of people who think all "real" music was created before 1920. Or 1820.

Unless you are actually obsessed with finding enough food or providing a roof over your head or keeping your family safe from harm - maybe you should just back off on who's obsessions are silly.

Otherwise, yes. Of course. In Animal Farm fashion, though, I'm pretty sure it can defensibly be said that while all obsessions are perhaps silly, some obsessions are sillier than others. Being obsessed with video games strikes me as less silly than, say, being obsessed with collecting gum wrappers.

I thought the claim was more that knowing at least something of the content and substance of particular video games was a prerequisite to 21st century cultural literacy -- in the same way that one isn't culturally literate if he doesn't have some familiarity with The Great Gatsby or The Godfather.

The claim went beyond possessing a general awareness that video games are popular form of mass entertainment in the early 21st c., which any student of our era could discover in the fifteen seconds it took to find that Monopoly was the parlor craze of 1936.

In which case (the first paragraph), yes, I cop to being culturally illiterate as regards the 21st century, which is going to come as quite the revelation to a fair number of people I know ... but tough. There are far worse things in this world. (I'm hoping my punk/comics/sf/horror foundation qualify me for subcultural literacy, though.)

There's no point to ignore to me. I remember an IRC chat for a RPing channel when two people who hated each other had each other on ignore. They were both in the same game and forgot to take it off, and the whole session consisted of the two yelling at each other, not seeing it, and imagining vile things were being 'said' behind their backs. Meanwhile, the other people were telling them to ####### it ignore off. Eventually, the session was canceled.

Anyway, even if you dislike a person, or a viewpoint, its important to still see it, if only because you should know what a person is saying.

Being obsessed with video games strikes me as less silly than, say, being obsessed with collecting gum wrappers.

But that's just subjective. Who cares? And why gum wrappers and not stamps or comics or coins or lolcats or bird watching or trainspotting? They are all pretty dang silly when you think about it.

As for sex - I think there is a level that goes beyond the norm here. Like if you spend ~10 hours/week trawling date sites, craiglists and meeting people... I think that borders on an obsessive hobby. But hey, I don't judge!

I haven't been actively following this particular video game discussion. I've made my opinions known on the subject in quite a few of these threads over the past few weeks. I do have one comment though:

The intent of the video game producer is to entertain the participating consumer, which differs from the intent of movie and TV show creators. Up and The Simpsons bear a merely superficial resemblance to video games.

Maybe in the 80s and up till the mid 90s, games only entertained the person holding the input device. Starting in the PSone generation, and increasing in magnitude and frequency ever since, certain games have evolved to the point where they can be a pseudo-movie for an audience. I agree with Dan's #111, I've had just as strong, if not stronger, emotional investment and reaction to a game as I have a movie, but that can extend to the audience as well. My wife has watched me play a handful of games over the years, and she'll admit that watching Resident Evil 4, Bioshock, or Uncharted 2 were just as rewarding and engaging as watching a quality movie. I have only played a few hours of the PSone Final Fantasy series, but I really enjoyed watching the narrative unfold while other people played. I think Silent Hill games can be better enjoyed as a spectator, adds to the "weak and not in control of the situation" theme. This obviously doesn't work for all games. Watching someone play Fallout 3 or the Elder Scrolls series is like pulling teeth, those are clearly solo endeavors.

Games have a lot more and different tools available for establishing a scene, defining characters, delivering narrative, & entertaining an audience. Studios have become so good at this, they are able to captivate non-participating audience members.

In so many words. Whereas my position is that someone (a lot of someones, actually; certainly, CrosbyBird is not alone in this instance) is driven by some sort of compulsion to intellectualize a particular interest of his.

Wow, this came back. And that was my quote about the influence of videogames.

Think of television and the role it plays in American society, and tell me if you could say that it is possible to understand American culture without a passing familiarity of television. I'm not saying you have to own a TV or even watch TV (although it's hard to completely escape it; most bars and many restaurants have televisions), mind you. Just know something about it.

Videogames are currently an industry that is a bit more than a third of the size of television. They're literally that much a part of our culture. Not just that, but the medium itself allows artists to create and deliver works in a way that is entirely unique.

It's not about wanting to intellectualize my hobby. I love card games and board games, but I would not say that someone who didn't understand card games or Monopoly can't truly understand American culture. It's about recognizing a cultural force for what it is. I don't think that's subjective.

Because the medium is in its infancy, and the technology has been a significant limitation, we've barely scratched the surface of what video games can continue to do to transform our culture. It is a valid art form, even if that isn't the primary goal for many of the current users and developers.

If anyone out there is getting millions of dollars for playing Monopoly or Final Fantasy or whatever, my hat's off to him/her/them.

This guy makes a good living playing Starcraft (and I suspect a few other top Starcraft players make a similar amount.) He's not really comparable to other sport stars in terms of earning potential, but he's comparable to a top chess player. Obviously poker players can make a good living as well.

Many video games don't really translate well to a competitive earning environment (for example, the only Final Fantasies that one could reasonably make a living off of are the MMO's). Professional leagues are more generally fighting games (Street Fighter/Tekken/maybe Brawl) and realtime strategy (Starcraft).

Video games are one of modern culture's methods of storytelling. At its best, a well-written video game has the ability to convey ideas and leave open questions for the player to think about and do it on a very personal level. Yes, there are a lot of crappy video games, but there are also a lot of crappy films, crappy novels, crappy art, and crappy music out there. Even an artist as transcendent as Mozart has a lot of lesser works that are bland and uninteresting (see Mozart's endless sets of generic minuets and contredanses, that were essentially marketed as background music).

Videogames are currently an industry that is a bit more than a third of the size of television. They're literally that much a part of our culture. Not just that, but the medium itself allows artists to create and deliver works in a way that is entirely unique.

Porn is a massive industry as well (I think I read somewhere recently that the revenue from porn dwarfs that of the mainstream movie industry, though I could be wrong - but either way the point remains), but nobody speaks of porn in polite conversation, and nobody would claim that one couldn't understand American culture without it.

Video games are something that some people find cool. They might even be cool. Yay. But let's not overstate it. And it seems that a relatively small subset of the population is interested in this.

...but nobody speaks of porn in polite conversation, and nobody would claim that one couldn't understand American culture without it.

- raises hand -

People who have a grasp of things like porn, videogames, and domesticated animals have a greater knowledge and understanding of American culture - and the human race - than those who simply ignore them. And far greater than those who think they are not worth discussing at all.

Comic books are one of modern culture's methods of storytelling. At its best, a well-written comic book has the ability to convey ideas and leave open questions for the reader to think about and do it on a very personal level. Yes, there are a lot of crappy comic books, but there are also a lot of crappy films, crappy novels, crappy art, and crappy music out there. Even an artist as transcendent as Mozart has a lot of lesser works that are bland and uninteresting (see Mozart's endless sets of generic minuets and contredanses, that were essentially marketed as background music).

People who have a grasp of things like porn, comic books, and domesticated animals have a greater knowledge and understanding of American culture - and the human race - than those who simply ignore them. And far greater than those who think they are not worth discussing at all.

Dear everyone --

Please present your bona-fides in this context (Lassus certainly has them, IIRC); otherwise, please admit that you're seriously unacquainted with a vital component of modern American culture & have no business pontificating on who else does or doesn't meet that threshold.

(No, I'm not being particularly serious here. As I've noted elsewhere, as of about 8 years ago I'd cracked the covers of probably fewer than a dozen comics in the preceding 25 years.)

I haven't been paying much attention to this debate, but I'd say that video games could easily end up as large a part of American culture as comic books were. (Probably rather closer than I realize to that already, but I absolutely don't think it's there yet.) The one thing that is against this happening is that it seems as if the advances in media and technology happen so fast now that nothing is able to become as firmly entrenched as comics were in their rather long heyday.

People who have a grasp of things like porn, videogames, and domesticated animals have a greater knowledge and understanding of American culture - and the human race - than those who simply ignore them. And far greater than those who think they are not worth discussing at all.

American pulp culture. That's essentially what porn, video games, and comic books are.(*) Some would put things like detective novels in this category, but a (correct) consensus has developed that the best of the genre transcend pulp.

I've read through this thread and I'm a bit puzzled. Is there a dispute that video games are not a huge part of American culture in the 2000s? That seems obvious to me and I don't play video games in any serious way (unless Angry Birds while sitting on the crapper counts).

Porn is a massive industry as well (I think I read somewhere recently that the revenue from porn dwarfs that of the mainstream movie industry, though I could be wrong - but either way the point remains), but nobody speaks of porn in polite conversation, and nobody would claim that one couldn't understand American culture without it.

I would absolutely say that you can't understand American culture without having a basic understanding of porn.

Remember, I'm not saying that you have to consume porn or know specific details about individual movies or magazines or stars. But a person who has never heard of, say, Playboy? Or doesn't know that people can buy magazines or films, or download porn on the internet? That person might as well be living in a stone hut on top of a mountain.

Please present your bona-fides in this context (Lassus certainly has them, IIRC); otherwise, please admit that you're seriously unacquainted with a vital component of modern American culture & have no business pontificating on who else does or doesn't meet that threshold.

You think you're being clever, but you're really just being a jackass. You keep trying to shift the sense of the position from "having a basic understanding" to "being a consumer of." Between this thread and the last one, enough people have clarified the precise position for you that a reasonable person would conclude that you're not interested in a good faith discussion.

I realize this is some manner of hierarchy you're trying to posit; but as America has a very very very short history and culture comparatively to everywhere else, I would really disagree this makes any difference whatsoever.

You think you're being clever, but you're really just being a jackass. You keep trying to shift the sense of the position from "having a basic understanding" to "being a consumer of." Between this thread and the last one, enough people have clarified the precise position for you that a reasonable person would conclude that you're not interested in a good faith discussion.

In other words, you're woefully & astonishingly ignorant about comics & are understandably defensive about it.

I haven't been paying much attention to this debate, but I'd say that video games could easily end up as large a part of American culture as comic books were. (Probably rather closer than I realize to that already, but I absolutely don't think it's there yet.)

Dunno; probably depends on the age group. Certainly, with the generation after mine, I'd say that video games, gaming culture, etc. are far more entrenched than comics are. (Offhand, I have no idea what the sales/rental/use/whatever figures for the more popular games are, but today's top-selling comics would've been cancelled posthaste when I was a kid; I strongy suspect that a newly released, really popular game sells more on the first day that the No. 1 comic sells in, hell, probably a year's worth of issues, though obviously there are numerous differences in the sales & industry model, to the point that an apples-vs.-oranges setup no doubt applies.) The fact that I'm not interested in the subject, while obviously a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge sociocultural failing of mine, doesn't change that.

Now, as to whether something will come along to affect tht development in light of

The one thing that is against this happening is that it seems as if the advances in media and technology happen so fast now that nothing is able to become as firmly entrenched as comics were in their rather long heyday.

Is there a dispute that video games are not a huge part of American culture in the 2000s?

Not by me. I'm just extremely dubious about how implicitly valid a ... for lack of a better term ... cultural signifier they are, & what lack of interest in them says about the observer who's characterized by such. Reality TV is also a huge part of American culture in the 2000s. I don't pay any attention to it, either. Which isn't to say that they occupy the same level by any means (I have infinitely more respect for any gamer on BTF than I do for anyone who can name a single Jersey Shore or American Idol or Dancing with the Stars participant), but merely to say that being "a huge part of American culture in the 2000s" is not in & of itself necessarily something wondrous & stimulating, IMHO.

Where I come from, huntin' & fishin' are a huge part of culture in the 2000s, & 1900s, & 1800s, etc. They're not for me. The end.

Whether that means that, despite having lived around 98 percent of my life in the South, I'm somehow profoundly disconnected from the culture that I grew up & continue to exist in, I'll leave for the CrosbyBirds of the world to decide.

Some would put things like detective novels in this category, but a (correct) consensus has developed that the best of the genre transcend pulp.

If you don't think this same thing will happen for video games (as it already has for "graphic novels," which are rampant in the English department where I currently work) you're kidding yourself. I'd already call something like EarthBound, a game that's just made for some pretentious jackass to apply auteur theory to, art in the same way a good movie is art.

Porn is a red herring in this discussion; it's a genre of TV show or movie (or book or video game) with a very particular aim, not a separate medium. So is "pulp," really. "Pulp" and "video game" aren't in the same set of classifications—it's like saying a pulp novel is different from a book. There are pulp video games and there are video games and there are video games that strive toward the same things art has always strived for in every popular medium.

You can say they aren't a great medium for transmitting art—and I'd agree with you, much as I love EarthBound, inasmuch as a lot of recent games owe too much to movies and too little to the act of playing a game—but to say that they are definitionally "pulp" is nonsensical, and should be setting off the alarm in your wrong-side-of-history-ometer given how identical it is to the claims people made about the novel, and film, and popular music, and every other cultural medium that's been invented in the last 500 years.

In other words, you're woefully & astonishingly ignorant about comics & are understandably defensive about it.

It happens to be the case that I know quite a bit about comic books.

I'd be similarly skeptical of how much a person who has never heard of Superman or Batman is in touch with mainstream American culture.

....The fact that I'm not interested in the subject, while obviously a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge sociocultural failing of mine, doesn't change that.

I wouldn't call it a failing so much as a condition that distances you from understanding a good deal of American culture. Not enjoying video games doesn't make someone some sort of terrible human being. Not knowing some basic information about video games and their significant influence on society will make a person a bit culturally deficient.

Not knowing some basic information about video games and their significant influence on society will make a person a bit culturally deficient.

In which case I again plead guilty. The basic info I have probably doesn't extend much beyond "they exist." (I wouldn't, for instance, have any real clue of what an X-Box is if you put one here on my desk, unless it was clearly labeled.) Oh, well. There's already too much info rattling around in my head; if I were to try to cram expanded knowledge of this particular subject in there, I'd probably no longer have room for, I dunno, Matter Eater Lad's real name.